O impacto de políticas monetárias na relação entre inflação e e variabilidade de preços relativos: evidência empírica para o Brasil de 1995 A 2012

Abstract

The assessment of the inflation effects on the Relative Price Variability (RPV) is a source of subsidies for economic policymakers when it comes to taking preventive measures against possible inflationary pressures, thus minimizing the costs in terms of product variation and employment. Once exposed that, this work aims to empirically investigate the effects of inflation targeting (IT) adoption on the relationship between inflation and RPV in the Brazilian economy from 1995 to 2012. Based on the literature, two models were estimated in order to test which one best fits in the Brazilian data. In the first one, the relationship takes the linear shape, while in the other it is U-shaped. Following Bai and Perron (1998, 2003), the regression models were estimated treating the dates of breaks as unknown variable, which were endogenously obtained in July of 1998 and November of 2002. In the period analyzed, the results do not corroborate the evidence of the U-shaped relation between inflation and RPV, once the marginal effect of inflation on the RPV is positive, although its magnitude is reduced after the adopting of IT and even more after the adoption of measures that gave credibility to comply with them. Additionally it was observed that the expected inflation had its effect reduced on RPV after the IT adoption, while the unexpected inflation only becomes significant after the adoption of this policy.